Hellos to all the peoples!!! This week has been pretty good since we last talked. It's kinda weird to think that we could have so much go down since Wednesday when I got to write. It's kinda weird actually writing on Monday; I feel like I haven't done that in forever! But we've been pretty busy and have gotten a lot of great stuff done. We had exchanges with Elder Eggleston and Elder Dollar, a district leader training meeting, and we actually got to get out and proselyte!
Well to start with, the district leader training meeting was fantastic. Elder Jenkins and I had to have everything all set up and ready before-hand, and thankfully he was right on the ball. We were able to have 100% of everything in order, which was a huge relief because I can imagine it would be awkward to have President Castro come in and find it all a mess. Elder Jenkins also led a great edpep on teaching simply. Way to go Elder Jenkins! I got to see Elder Law there, and it was a super happy re-union. He's doing super well out in Lom Poc; his Spanish is practically perfect!
A really neat miracle went down at the training meeting; a man walked in looking for the bishop. It turns out, he'd met Elder Jenkins before when he walked into a DIFFERENT church building looking for help. He'd recently had a lot of tough trials and was looking to move out here from Arizona. So, Elder Jenkins was able to point him to the local bishop, who turns out to be someone he knew back in Arizona. The man was REALLY grateful, and expressed a lot of desire to join the church as well. It was awesome!
That same day we had a lesson in the Hunt family's home. They live in and operate a MASSIVE care center for older people, and two of their employees had agreed to meet with us; one a Hispanic mother of three kids and another YSA woman. It was weird, because we started off teaching Monica and her kids in Spanish, and then had to accomodate Domonique (the YSA woman) when she arrived. Both of them seemed to be really interested, they were really good lessons!
Eric is doing great; we'll have to move his baptism date to the 24th, but he's excited for it anyway. Hopefully we can meet with him more often in the coming week; I've only seen him twice. He came to the YSA ward though, and loved it; although the Gospel Principles class on the final judgement had a little too much deep doctrine for him. It was kinda scary to sit there and hope he listened to the spirit and not his fears. He asked good questions about it afterward though, and is going to read some scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants on the questions he has.
We have our Christmas devotional coming up, and that'll be a blast! We'll be meeting in the Santa Barbara Stake Center, so that'll be interesting. We're planning on calling between 11-1 o' clock on Christmas. I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas, and that you all feel the spirit of the season. Keep looking for those opportunities to serve, teach and testify, and more than everything, have fun!! I love you all, and I'm very grateful for everything you all do!
Love,
Elder Matthew David Clough
PS: I broke my glasses finally; they were on their last leg anyway, and when I tried to fix the lenses that kept falling out, the frame snapped in half. :( So I'll be utilizing my contacts for the next little while until I figure out what to do about them.
PPS: I forgot a miracle!!! During the exchange with Elder Dollar in Nipomo; as we biked out to a remote family, the road we were on turned into a half mile of sand! I had about 1-1 and 1/2 inch street tires, and I wrecked several times during the first ten feet. There was just too much psi on the sand, and when I tried to bike it just fish-tailed or dug into the sand. Finally, I said a prayer in my heart, saying that if it was the will of God that we should visit this person, give me the ability to bike the rest of the way without falling again, but if we were wasting our time and were to turn around, let me fall. It wasn't easy; I had to fight it the whole way, but I finished the rest of the half mile without stopping or falling once. We didn't find the person we went to see, but we made a good connection with the husband, and he was very willing to have us return.
